"Do you still wish to go on, or shall we return and explain this accident to the girls whose voices I certainly hear in the hall overhead ?" "We must go back," I reluctantly consented.

A wild idea had crossed my brain of following out my first impulse and of charging Miss Charity in her own house with the visits which had from time to time depopulated this house.
"I shall leave you to make the necessary explanations," said he.

"I am really rushed with business and should be down-town on the mayor's affairs at this very moment." "I am quite ready," said I.Then as I squeezed my way through between the corner of the cabinet and the foundation wall, I could not help asking him how he thought it possible for these old ladies to mount to the halls above from the bottom of the four-foot hole in which we now stood.
"The same way in which I now propose that you should," he replied, lifting into view the object we had seen at one side of the passage, and which now showed itself to be a pair of folding steps.

"Canny enough to discover or perhaps to open this passage, they were canny enough to provide themselves with means of getting out of it.

Shall I help you ?" "In a minute," I said.